Are You Prepared to Serve Someone Who Is in Need?
Tom Shrader continues through Ephesians 4, walking through Paul's commands to put off falsehood, handle anger quickly, and work not merely for personal gain but to meet the genuine needs of others. He draws on Acts 2:42-47 to show how the early church's selfless generosity and communal life created compelling witness to the surrounding world. The central challenge is how much is enough—calling believers to move beyond comfort and accumulation toward a life that reflects the character of God and draws others toward Him.
“The natural byproduct of living a life different than the world is fruit—what makes us distinctive and compelling to the world is not that we don't encounter the same hardships, but that when we encounter them, we respond radically different.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Ephesians
Recorded: 2010 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 37 min
Themes: generosity, serving others, anger, honesty, community, contentment, witness, needs of others, struggling with selfishness, managing anger, new believer, feeling financially comfortable, young adult, someone questioning generosity, navigating conflict, parent teaching kids to give
Scripture: Ephesians 4:1, Ephesians 4:17-32, Ephesians 4:17, Ephesians 4:20, Ephesians 4:22, Ephesians 4:23, Ephesians 4:24, Ephesians 4:25, Ephesians 4:26, Ephesians 4:27, Ephesians 4:29, Ephesians 4:30, Ephesians 4:31, Romans 13:14, Romans 12:17-21, Psalm 69:9, Luke 12:15-21, Acts 2:41-47, 1 Corinthians 13
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, ecclesiology, early church, pauline ethics, putting off the old self, stewardship, biblical generosity
Full Transcript
Christianity Is Belief That Transforms Behavior
Open your Bibles, if you would, to the book of Ephesians, chapter four. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will bring you one. You'll need to get your hand up high, because it can be tough to see from the aisles. Go about two-thirds of the way back and you'll reach the New Testament. Turn to page 152 and that will get you to Ephesians chapter four, which is where we are.
A quick note for anyone who has been receiving a Bible here for the third or fourth week in a row: I would really encourage you to take advantage of the thirty percent discount in the bookstore and get a Bible of your own. This is not about selling Bibles. The whole goal of the bookstore and the café is to break even — we are not trying to make money. But at East Valley Bible Church, almost every Sunday we are working our way through a passage, and having your own Bible and your own notebook is genuinely helpful. Come prepared, and be praying that God would be the teacher — that the Holy Spirit would take His Word, and my inadequate words, and apply them to your heart. That is our goal here.
The Structure of Ephesians
When we get to Ephesians four, we should note something we mention often. There are six chapters in this letter. Chapters one, two, and three form the first half; chapters four, five, and six form the second half. Beyond that division, there is also a shift in character: the first three chapters tend to be doctrinal. You could spend the rest of your life studying Ephesians one, two, and three, because they contain these great foundational truths that reach out into the rest of the New Testament and into the Old Testament as you begin to unpack them.
But Paul does not leave it as doctrine alone, and there is a great model for us in that. The teaching we do, the study you do, is not simply an information dump. It is not about seeing how much Bible you can know, because knowledge is of no value if it is not transforming your life. If you are reading it and nothing is happening, rather than blaming your own inadequacy or the church you attend, you ought to take a hard look and ask: why isn't the Spirit of God applying His Word to me? That is really the challenge.
Christianity Is a System of Belief
We say, at its essence, that Christianity is a system of belief, not behavior. It is belief, not ethic. To drive that home, consider this: if someone says to you, "So-and-so is a good Christian man," and you ask what that means, they might say, "He feeds the hungry." So do pagans. "He builds houses for Habitat for Humanity." So do Buddhists. Every activity we would associate with Christianity is also done — granted, for entirely different motives — by people who do not share our faith.
What makes someone a Christian is what he believes. It is critical to have the right belief system. We are not all worshiping the same God. There is the God of the Bible, the one true God, who has a Son, Jesus Christ, who died so that we could have eternal life. If I am worshiping a god other than that, I am worshiping a false god, and I should not take any comfort in the idea that it does not really matter which god I worship. It matters enormously. So at its core, Christianity is defined by what we believe.
Therefore: Walk Worthy
That is precisely the point Paul makes. Look at chapter four, verse one. Paul begins with the word "therefore" — a transition is taking place. "Therefore," because everything in chapters one, two, and three is true, "I implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called." The word "walk" here means life or lifestyle. Paul is saying: live in a way that corresponds with what you believe. The belief system that demonstrates you are a Christian should be made visible to the people around you through your behavior.
Now in verse seventeen, we are going to spend several weeks in the section running from verse seventeen through verse thirty-two. Paul begins this section with something of a contrast, almost a negative. He writes, "I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer as the Gentiles walk." There is that word again — walk, live, lifestyle. Your way of living is to be different from the Gentiles.
The Gentile Walk: Futility of Mind
We need to understand what Paul means when he speaks of the Gentiles and their walk. It begins, in verse seventeen, with futility of mind. Futility means vain, useless, of no value, empty. It starts with an empty mind, a darkened understanding — they simply do not get it. Because of that, the heart grows hard and callous, and a person ends up living according to every sensuality and impulse around them. Paul is describing the evidence of someone who is not following Christ: their mind is dark, and it all begins with their thought process.
Then verse twenty brings the contrast: "But you have learned." Something has been taught to you. Something is different about you, and it begins again in the mind. You have heard this. You have understood this. So here is the charge: verse twenty-two, lay aside the old self; verse twenty-four, put on the new self. The Christian walk is a two-step movement — put off, then put on. Lay aside the old, natural, Gentile way of thinking, and put on the new. And right between those two commands, in verse twenty-three, comes the hinge: "be renewed in the mind." That is exactly where the Gentile process began — with a futility of mind. Now the call is to walk in a manner worthy by starting in the very same place, the mind, but moving in the opposite direction.
Putting Off the Old, Putting On the New
Put on the new self. You are to begin to look and act and think differently. Paul says it this way in Romans chapter 13, verse 14: "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ," and make no provision for the flesh regarding its lust. I put off the old, I put on the new. That flesh, those desires — he said don't facilitate them. Don't in any way try to fuel them; starve them. The sin, the darkness of heart, the callousness, the sensuality — put all of that away and don't make allowance for it. So if my besetting sin is a particular thing, I make sure I'm not putting myself in situations where I'll be tempted in that area. Make no provision for the flesh. Put it off, put on the new.
Speaking Truth That Builds Up
Verse 25: lay aside falsehood — but it's not just enough to stop. Speak the truth. Speak in a way that's different. We connected verse 25 with verse 29 last time: "Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth." So I'm not to speak falsehoods, but I am to speak words that are positive — not blowing smoke at people, but not unwholesome either. That word "unwholesome" carries the same idea as futility: useless, empty.
Your word is to be positive, constructive, and perceptive. "Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only what is good for edification, for building the other person up according to the need of the moment." I have no way of knowing what someone needs unless I perceive, listen, and understand. That's why if a total stranger comes up to me and says I shouldn't do something, my initial flinch is always to discount it — or at least not give it the weight I would give someone I've known for a long time who comes and says, "Here's something you need to work on." Relationship becomes important in that process.
So put aside falsehood and speak the truth to one another. Why? We are one body — this all goes together. To paraphrase: let your words be positive, not negative; constructive, not destructive; perceptive, not preconceived; and effective rather than having no effect at all.
Guarding a Quick Tongue
My flinch runs negative. Some people's does more than others, and mine is considerable. I have a moderately quick mind and a very quick tongue, with not much in between sometimes, and that is not good. I work on it constantly. I'm much better than I used to be, which doesn't mean I'm where I need to be yet, but it's better. You have to guard it.
Let me give you a real example. There's a door coming into this room off the courtyard. A while back, my hair was quite long — I had actually scheduled an appointment to get it cut — and a man said to me, "You need to get a haircut." I said, "Well, you just freed up a half hour on Tuesday for me." Now fast-forward a year or two, when my hair was even longer. I'm walking toward this man — never seen him in my life, don't know him — and he says to me, "If I give you twenty dollars, will you get your hair cut?" I looked at him and said, "If I give you twenty dollars, will you join a gym?"
I am not saying that was good. It was clever, and it felt good, but I'm not saying it was appropriate. It probably doesn't fall into the category of positive, constructive, perceptive, or effective — although I think it was effective in one sense, because I never saw him again. That is my flinch.
The Weight of a Careless Word
I was talking with someone this week — I'll refer to them without giving a gender — who had just spent time with their father and had a little incident. The father made a comment not unlike the one I just described, and this person was reeling from it. Now let me step outside the text for a moment and offer some practical perspective: if your father is seventy-five years of age or older, he comes from a whole different mindset. He speaks quickly, doesn't talk at length, isn't oriented toward emotional expression, and if you wrote "I love you" on a card, he couldn't read it — not literally, but emotionally. There are a few exceptions, but not many.
Justin Marshall and I were walking from one building to another for a staff meeting, and his daughter was in the process of potty training. As we walked, he was on the phone saying, "Oh, honey, that's so good, that's so sweet, I'm so proud of you, I love you so much, that is so terrific, that's amazing." We got to the room and I said, "That is more positive affirmation than I received in my entire childhood from my dad." I don't blame him for it — that's just the way that generation was.
Here is the takeaway: if you feel something missing because you didn't receive that kind of affirmation, and you understand the sting of careless words, then you should be doubly burdened to make sure your own children have the reinforcement, the love, and the care that they need. That generation wasn't trying to withhold anything. They simply could not read "I love you," and they were not going to say it.
Anger as a Spark, Not a Fuel
We need to understand the power of words — both the power of words spoken and the power of words that need to be said but aren't said. Don't let falsehood come from your mouth. Put it aside, get rid of it. But speak the truth.
Look at verse 26: "Be angry, but don't sin." When we hear anger, we immediately think of sin, and that is how we see it, because most of our anger is around something that has happened to us. We are angry because somebody has interfered with our life or our plan — angry, by and large, for ourselves. Yet we know that the Lord Jesus never sinned, and we know He was perturbed at times.
When He walked into the court of the Gentiles and saw the money changers there, He raised havoc, and it was an issue driven by justice. Even if you brought in a pigeon for sacrifice, temple inspectors would find a flaw and tell you it wouldn't work — that you needed a pre-approved pigeon available for five times the price. Then you also had to exchange your currency for temple currency, and they were taking a cut, much like payday loan operators. So it was as much a justice issue as anything else.
Jesus was also angry when the disciples tried to keep the little children from coming to Him. He was angry when the Pharisees accused Him of healing on the Sabbath. So there is nothing wrong with anger — but it should be a spark to action, not the fuel for the action.
Don't Let Anger Take Root
My own instinct is to be angry when somebody stands in my way or impedes me. Once that anger takes hold, you can drop down to verse 31, which shows how it gives root to bitterness, wrath, clamor, and everything that goes with it. He says, if it is minor, don't let the sun go down on it — in their time, working from sunup to sundown marked the end of the day. He is saying: take care of it right away.
What happens with us is that somebody offends us — sometimes repeatedly, without even knowing it — and rather than go and deal with it, we almost instinctively begin to harbor it. That harboring gives way to all the bitterness and wrath and everything that comes with it. He says if you want to be angry, that is fine, but it is temporary. We want to try to make things right.
In Romans chapter 12, verse 17, Paul writes: "Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own vengeance, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is Mine and I will repay, says the Lord. If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Even when anger is righteous, it needs to be dealt with quickly.
Righteous Anger That Moves You Into Action
Someone was using the example of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It begins with someone who is angry at what they see happening in the culture as a result of excessive alcohol use and the deaths that follow — especially children. There is nothing wrong with anger motivating that, but anger cannot then fuel the effort as you go.
When you look around at the culture today, there are legitimate things to be angry about, and that anger may spark you into action. Maybe you look at the schools and feel some sense of anger or outrage. That can be a spark that moves you to get involved with a parents' group, or to run for a school board, or to become a teacher. That anger can spark you, but it cannot fuel you.
You may see some level of injustice — whether it is the issue of Roe v. Wade that we have been dealing with for so long, or people being abused along the Broadway corridor, people who have nothing and have been taken advantage of. You may be moved, compelled, even angered by that. But that anger cannot fuel your effort as God moves you to be His instrument in dealing with whatever that situation is. As Psalm 69, verse 9 indicates, it is the anger of God's people that hates evil — so it becomes a spark that moves you. But if you stay angry, you will end up bitter, and all the things that go with bitterness will follow.
The Foothold You Give the Devil
Verse 27 identifies the core problem in the midst of all this: you are giving the devil an opportunity, a foothold. You are allowing Satan to move in. I use the term "culture warrior" and I understand what people mean by it. You can be clearly distressed by the culture, and being engaged is good. But when you are driven by the anger, it is not winsome.
When you are angry, Satan will get in there and appeal to your pride. Even if it starts as righteous anger, you will end up prideful. You will end up fighting for the cause in a way that absorbs you entirely. That is simply the way it works.
Work, Generosity, and Corporate Responsibility
He must labor, performing with his own hands what is good. This would be a notoriously crooked area — the people in the mountains, with all sorts of commerce going on, ripping people off. Don't steal. But work. The Bible is pretty clear: if I'm not working, I shouldn't eat. Now we have to put that in our context, because we have a whole bunch of people right now who aren't working simply because they can't — the opportunity isn't there. But the call is for us to be gainfully employed, not stealing and living off that. I should be working.
Why? Look at the text: "so that he will have something to share with one who has need." In both of these instances, Paul immediately gets us out of ourselves. We should speak the truth — why? Because we're members of one another. We should work — why? Because there are going to be people around you who have real, serious, legitimate needs, and you might well be the instrument that God uses to meet those needs.
I am addicted, perhaps, to comfort. I like comfortable things. I don't like hassle. I was brushing my teeth this morning and was struck again by the fact that the house next to me has been empty for two years, and there are about four of them across the way that are empty as well. It's so quiet. It's very nice. I mean, I feel very bad for the people, but I do benefit from it. Two of the ones across the way had dogs that left with their owners, so it was just perfect.
But here is the question Paul is raising: how much money is enough? He says work — but not just to meet your own needs. Work to be used by God to meet the needs of people around you who are truly needy. That forces me into an internal discussion in my own mind about how much is enough. How much do I need to have? How much reserve? There was an athlete — it doesn't matter who — who makes hundreds of millions of dollars, and he was talking about the fact that he wanted to work to provide for his family. At some level, they're pretty well taken care of. From this pulpit, for twenty years, we've been calling you all to a reasonable lifestyle.
The Parable of the Rich Fool
A man comes to Jesus and says, "Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." And Jesus says, "Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed, for not even when one has an abundance does life consist of his possessions." Then He told the parable: the land of a rich man was very productive. This man has money. It seems an unusual thing to discuss in the times we live in, but there are still plenty of people with plenty of money.
He began reasoning with himself, and he said, "This is what I will do. I will have no place to store my crops." Ten times he uses the singular personal pronoun in this passage. "I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and all my goods. And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take life easy, eat, drink, and be merry.'" And God said to him, "You fool. This very night your soul will be required of you." And then comes what you can anticipate: "So it is with the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." Then He turns to the disciples and says, "For this reason I say to you, do not worry about life."
Members of One Another, Called to Share
As I work my way through this passage, I find myself thinking: he wants me to work, not just so I can eat, but because I have some sort of corporate responsibility to those who have legitimate needs around me. That raises the question: how much of my stuff — really God's stuff — should I keep? How much is enough? And I think I have to answer that question honestly, knowing I will always set that number higher than it legitimately needs to be.
I planned on getting further today in the prepared material, but I was struck, putting these ideas together, that we are members of one another and we should work so that we have something to share with one who has need. With that in mind, take this trip with me to the left, to the book of Acts. In the Bible provided for you, I'm told it is page 92 — Acts, chapter two.
The Early Church as a Model
Here is the setting. Peter has delivered a message, the Holy Spirit has moved, people have responded to the gospel, they have been baptized, and Acts chapter two, verse 41 tells us that about three thousand people were saved that day. So what do you do at that point? This is now the beginning of the church.
Acts 2:42: "They continually devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer." The very first service we ever had at East Valley Bible Church was November 3rd, 1991, and the text was Acts 2:42. That passage tells us, obviously, what a church needs to be about. We need to be about the teaching of the Word. We need to be about fellowship — that is, living life together, having some sense of community.
You are not going to be able to do that as one large group. You have people moving in and out of here, students through the week, and attendance that varies by season — somewhere between three thousand and four thousand, depending on the time of year. You are not going to know all of them. But we are to have some circle of community around us. And then there is the breaking of bread — the Lord's Supper — and prayer. This was their lifestyle, ongoing and continual.
"And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe, and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles."
The Early Church's Radical Generosity
Those who believed, verse 44, had all things in common. They began to sell their property and possessions, and they were sharing them with all, as anyone who might have need. What you had in this church was a group of pilgrims from all around who had come to Jerusalem for Passover. They had stayed on, God had done an amazing thing, Jesus rose from the dead, and now they were out of money. There were no inns to stay in, no Motel 6, no place to go — so they were together, but quickly running out of cash.
People in the church were liquidating their assets to meet the needs of others. This was not a form of communism. Scripture is pretty clear that it is pro-private property. What was happening here was voluntary — they were seeing a need and meeting it.
Day by day, continuing with one mind, they were in the temple and breaking bread, going from house to house, taking meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart. Look at verse 47, because oftentimes we stop before it. They were praising God, which makes total sense, but they were also having favor with all people. The world was looking at this and saying, there is something really odd here.
When we talked about humility, we noted that the Greeks did not even have a word for it — they had to make one up. These believers were living in this selfless way, and even the watching world took notice.
John Wooden and the Definition of Success
Reflecting on John Wooden, reading through much of what he wrote and said, one question keeps coming back: what made Wooden unique? Obviously he won. He was at UCLA for 16 years before he won a national title, but then he won 10 in 12 years. What they accomplished will never happen again in the history of men's college athletics in football or basketball. Yet in his own mind, that winning was not what made him successful.
Wooden had his own definition of success, and it came out of his roots. He was a high school English teacher in 1933 and 1934, and he was having a problem with parents who were frustrated that their children were not receiving A's and B's. He refused to give a student an A unless that student had earned it. Out of that tension came an absolute realization: we are not all equal in terms of giftedness and ability. All you need to do is look around a room — some are taller than others, some are smarter than others, some have been given a great deal of ability and some have been given almost none.
Wooden wrote his own definition of success in response to this. Webster's definition involves accumulation and outward achievement. Wooden's definition was based — and this is a paraphrase — on a peace of mind that comes from the satisfaction of knowing you have done the best you can do. You may only be a C student, but you can be a successful C student and a failing B student, because that B student could have been an A.
When you listen to people describe Wooden, they come back again and again to one word: selflessness. At its essence, that is love. That is the core of 1 Corinthians 13 and those fifteen attributes of love. The center of it all is that love does not regard itself. It is selfless.
Favor With All People
Look at what was happening in the early church. Even the people who were going to kill these believers had favor toward them. The world was essentially saying, "I love what you are doing — it is amazing — and I am still going to have to stone you, persecute you, beat you, hang you on a pole and burn you, but I will tell you, you are amazing." They were praising God and having favor with all people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day.
Fruit Happens
The natural process of the Christian life should be fruit. When Susan and I moved — I think it was about four years ago, after living in our previous house for 23 years — we had in the backyard an ornamental fruit tree. This is not an exaggeration: there were thousands of little oranges on that tree. When those oranges came in, the branches would literally begin to bend. You would have to go out and shake them and pull them off. I felt terrible watching Susan out there doing all of that work.
But I never — and I say this all the time — I never walked past that tree and heard it grunting and groaning trying to produce fruit. Here is the bumper sticker: fruit happens. It is simply a natural byproduct of life.
In the Christian life, the natural byproduct is living differently than the world, and that is the whole point. The point is not that we will avoid what everyone else encounters. People in the body of Christ and outside it alike will get breast cancer, lose jobs, struggle to make payments on their house, have children who go sideways, lose loved ones they care about, even lose children. What makes us distinctive and compelling to the world is not that we do not encounter those things — we do — but that when we encounter them, we respond in a radically different way.
The world sees people hurting around them and says, "Why doesn't the government do something?" We ought to look at people around us and ask, "What level of responsibility do I have here?"
Living the Gospel in the World
We can assume there are people who are hurting. You don't need a government program for that — you simply move alongside them. And when the world sees that, they are drawn to it. That is why here at Valley Bible Church we will fight to say we don't want to be an isolated conclave where we are all Christians who only listen to Christian music and Christian comics and Christian everything. "Christian" is not an adjective; it is a noun. And it means get out into the world and live this life.
When people see you living in this Acts 2 way, summarily praising God and in favor with people, this should be a constant encounter in your life — even if they are going to persecute you and fire you, even if they are going to tell you you're nuts. There should be a constant flow of fruit in our lives. That is the whole theme of the New Testament.
Once we understand the gospel, we recognize that the gospel is not just a matter of dealing with our sin, though it is, and that is significant. It reconciles us to God and we are no longer His enemies. But now we are told to go into the world and to be ambassadors.
Faithfulness in Simple Things
It comes down to the simplest of things. Look what He says: tell the truth. If you say you are going to be somewhere at eight o'clock, show up at eight o'clock. If you say you are going to do something, you do it. There are extraordinary circumstances — sometimes something intervenes, you get a flat tire, something you could not possibly have foreseen — but as a way of life, if I say I am going to do something, I do it.
Why does this matter? Because we are all one body, and we cannot function without truth at the center of it. Is government grinding to a halt? Absolutely. Why? There is no trust anymore. Nobody trusts anybody for anything.
The Danger of Unchecked Anger
He says to be angry, but do not let anger be your lifestyle. Because if it is your lifestyle, here is what is going to happen. Look at verse 31 — bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. You can feel the progression there. That is where unresolved anger leads.
And in the midst of all of this, it is not a matter of pursuing powerful or positive living in some superficial sense. In the middle of it, He says in verse 30 that you are grieving the Holy Spirit. If you are living just like the world — not telling the truth, harboring anger, holding a grudge, speaking in ways that are purely destructive — that is what the world does. Do not grieve the Spirit of God.
How exactly do you grieve the Holy Spirit? That is what we will look at next week. We will pick up exactly right there.
Closing Prayer
Father, those are amazingly strong words to me — compelling and challenging. How am I living? Am I driven by the temporal or the eternal? Thank God we put it all together. You tell us to plan and prepare and be good stewards, but at some point we see needs around us, we see we have the capacity to meet them, and we did not meet them.
God, I pray that we would be a people who speak the truth because we are one, who are angered by the things that anger You, but who deal with it quickly. We would not steal. If we are getting paid for eight hours, we would work eight hours — we would not steal even time. Why? So that we have something to share with those who are in need.
God, I pray that our lives would be like our speech — positive and constructive, perceptive, and ultimately effective. That we would be like that church we saw in Acts 2, praising You, having favor with people, and You would be adding to our numbers day by day. God, will You do that? That is what we ask of You.
Father, we pray for those who are hurting now. God, I pray You would bring them forward to talk to the staff who are here, that they would understand we would love to pray with them and help them. God, will You do that work? That is what we ask in Christ's name. Amen.